It marked the first time a rocket from Wallops left Earth's orbit, the first flight of the Minotaur V and the first lunar mission to launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, established in 1945. The execution was flawless, experts said.

"The orbital insertion was as big a bull's eye as you can get," said Barron Beneski, spokesman for Orbital Sciences Corp., the Dulles-based company that developed the Minotaur V.

According to Doug Voss, project manager at Wallops, it was also groundbreaking for the U.S. Air Force to provide the launch vehicle to NASA, and for the agency to designate Wallops as intermediary rather than merely the provider of range services.

At a press conference following the launch, Air Force Col. William Gillespie called the launch "picture perfect," but NASA officials added it wasn't without glitches.

"Like any new venture, things don't quite as planned," said John M. Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the science mission directorate.

Not long after launch, LADEE powered off its reaction wheels, leaving NASA scientists to puzzle out why.

"We're currently looking at it," said S. Pete Worden, director of NASA Ames in California. "It's not an unusual event."

NASA will be looking at the data, Worden said, "and we hope in the next few days to get these bugs ironed out and get the science that we expect."

LADEE is a car-sized observatory equipped with science instruments to do just what its name indicates: study the moon's atmosphere and dust particles.

It's also equipped to demonstrate a new laser communication system that uses light waves to relay data rather than radio waves.

But the overall goal of the mission, NASA says, is to use what we learn about the moon's atmosphere to better understand Earth's – much the way studying the atmosphere of Venus helped explain the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas – as well as that of other planets, moons and large asteroids.

The moon's ultra-thin atmosphere is what's known as a "surface boundary exosphere," the most common type in our solar system. Yet it largely remains a mystery to scientists.

"To understand the dust in the moon and how it behaves in the lunar environment will give us a better understanding not just of the moon but other bodies like the moon – how it might perform or act when we go study those bodies," Voss explained.

NASA is eager to study the lunar surface while it's still in a relatively pristine state.

And because the moon has changed very little since it was formed billions of years ago, it could also offer unique insight into planetary evolution.

According to NASA, LADEE's $280 million mission will last about six months and unfold in five phases:

•Liftoff is the 20-minute process that begins when the booster vaults from the launchpad and ends when the payload fairing carrying the LADEE observatory is jettisoned. The spacecraft powers up and transitions to a safe mode.

•About six days after launch, LADEE will begin making three increasingly bigger orbits around Earth, making trajectory corrections with each pass. On the third loop, it will get caught up in the moon's gravity, coasting in to achieve lunar orbit.

•About 30 days after launch, LADEE will begin 40 days of activating and checking out its science instruments. During the final 10 days, it will drop into lower orbit to begin taking the first measurements of the lunar exosphere and dust.

•The all-important science phase kicks in for the next 100 days as LADEE begins equatorial orbits between 12 and 93 miles above the lunar surface. Its three science instruments will determine the composition of the lunar atmosphere and remotely sense any lofted dust, measure chemical variations in the lunar atmosphere over several lunar orbits and detect any lunar dust particles in the tenuous atmosphere.

•In the final phase, called "decommissioning," LADEE's onboard propellant will be nearly spent. Its orbit will degrade until the observatory — gathering and transmitting data all the while — plows into the moon's surface.

"They go in and crash, then all goes black," said Voss. "At the end of it, that's it."

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